Sometimes old tricks are the best, and it looks like, at least for now, some folks can squeeze a bit more out of their Radeon RX 9070 GPUs. First and foremost, BIOS-flashing can void the manufacturer’s warranty or worse, damage or brick a card so do so at your own risk. That said PC enthusiasts have been using this technique to unlock added performance from hardware for a very long time. These days manufacturers often lock things down preventing users from being able to flash a device’s BIOS with another but every now and then someone discovers it can still be done and voila, instantly increased performance.
A PC Games Hardware forum member has been sharing their success stories in flashing AMD’s more budget-friendly RDNA-4-based Radeon RX 9070 with its flagship sibling’s BIOS. The Radeon RX 9070 features 56 Compute Units (3,584 steam processors) which cannot be changed with a BIOS swap but it is possible to raise the power limits and clock speed. It’s already quite common to increase performance by overclocking thus usually gaining in the area of 10%-20% depending on the model but this could potentially add the cherry on top for some.
As of now, this has only been reported to have been done with an Asus Prime Radeon RX 9070 OC (MSRP $659.99). The user swapped out the non-XT BIOS with an Asus XT version. The boost clocked was increased from 2.6 GHz to over 3 GHz but at a considerable power cost. TGP increased from 220 Watts to 317 Watts. The good news is that even with 2x 8-pin connectors, the card is able to be supplied with adequate power but this is cutting it close since each connector is rated for 150 Watts so obviously we’re reaching the point where PCIe power is a factor. By comparison, the Asus Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC, with 64 Compute Units (4,096 stream processors) has 3x 8-pin connectors and a TGP of 304 watts.
Both the original poster, and other users have reported gains upwards of 15%-20% but they have also indicated there’s a significant amount of fine tuning involved. From stutters, freezing, and ULPS (ultra low power state) there is extra work needed to make this trick work but for those who succeed, the lower priced card can get within reach of its higher priced sibling.